Moral in whose eyes? Cross-cultural differences in moral decision making and behaviour

All people want to feel that they are morally adequate. People tend to evaluate their moral adequacy by judging their behaviour through their own eyes (first-person perspective) or the eyes of others (third-person perspective). People in all cultures use both perspectives, but there may be cultural variations in which perspective takes precedence. By conducting two studies, we explore the way people in face cultures are more likely to secure their moral self-regard through the eyes of others (vs. their own eyes), whereas the opposite is true in case of people from dignity cultures. Study 1 found that people from face culture (Korean participants) cheated to a lesser extent when others were invoked (vs. not invoked), but people from dignity culture (American participants) were not affected by this priming. Study 2 found that moral intentions were more strongly influenced by what participants perceived others to do in moral situations in face (vs. dignity) cultures. In contrast, moral intentions were found to be more strongly influenced by what they believed they should do in moral situations in dignity (vs. face) cultures.     

类别表征与策略的脑科学研究及对思维教学的启示

脑科学研究表明,分类中对物体的知觉表征激活颞下叶皮层和颞中区等区域;语义表征激活前额皮层等。语义加工和知觉表征相互作用的脑机制表现为额区与视觉区域间信息的传递、提取。分类策略主要有规则策略和相似性策略两种。规则策略激活额区等广泛区域;相似性策略与视觉区域相关,包含着对个别样例的记忆过程。基于以上研究结果,本文从学习材料的表征和对材料进行表征时的策略两个方面为思维教学提出了一些建议。     

Identification of Matrices in Science and Engineering

Engineering science is a scientific discipline that from the point of view of epistemology and the philosophy of science has been somewhat neglected. When engineering science was under philosophical scrutiny it often just involved the question of whether engineering is a spin-off of pure and applied science and their methods. We, however, hold that engineering is a science governed by its own epistemology, methodology and ontology. This point is systematically argued by comparing the different sciences with respect to a particular set of characterization criteria. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The exact vs. approximate distinction in numerical cognition may not be exact, but only approximate: How different processes work together in multi-digit addition

Two types of calculation processes have been distinguished in the literature: approximate processes are supposed to rely heavily on the non-verbal quantity system, whereas exact processes are assumed to crucially involve the verbal system. These two calculation processes were commonly distinguished by manipulation of two factors in addition problems: the identity of the target and the distance of the distractor. However, in all previous studies, these two factors were not manipulated independently. In this fMRI study, we could disentangle the two factors by using a different (two-digit) number stimulus set. Both behavioral and neurofunctional data suggest that the cognitive processes involved could be best explained by the (independent) factors target and distractor distance. Based on these data we suggest that the exact/approximate distinction does not seem to be as generally valid as previously assumed. We conclude that this study may be a starting point for a closer examination of the experimental, procedural and strategic conditions of when the exact/approximate distinction is valid and when it is not.     

Perceptual decoupling or motor decoupling?

The current investigation was conducted to elucidate whether errors of commission in the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) are indicators of perceptual or motor decoupling. Twenty-eight participants completed SARTs with motor and perceptual aspects of the task manipulated. The participants completed four different SART blocks whereby stimuli location uncertainty and stimuli acquisition were manipulated. In previous studies of more traditional sustained attention tasks stimuli location uncertainty reduces sustained attention performance. In the case of the SART the motor manipulation (stimuli acquisition), but not the perceptual manipulation (stimuli location uncertainty) significantly reduced commission errors. The results suggest that the majority of SART commission errors are likely to be indicators of motor decoupling not necessarily perceptual decoupling.     

The Shape Bias is Affected by Differing Similarity Among Objects

Previous research has demonstrated that visual properties of objects can affect shape-based categorization in a novel-name extension task; however, we still do not know how a relationship between visual properties of objects affects judgments in a novel-name extension task. We examined effects of increased visual similarity among the target and test objects in a shape bias task in young children and adults. Experiment 1 assessed college students with sets of objects whose similarity between target and test objects was either low or high similarity. Adults preferred shape when the similarity among objects was minimized. Experiment 2 tested 24-month olds in their use of the shape bias using the Intermodal Preferential Looking Paradigm. Children showed a shape bias only with items whose similarity to each other was low. These findings suggest that the visual properties of objects affect shape bias performance.     

Phonological abstraction without phonemes in speech perception

Recent evidence shows that listeners use abstract prelexical units in speech perception. Using the phenomenon of lexical retuning in speech processing, we ask whether those units are necessarily phonemic. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Dutch speaker producing ambiguous phones between the Dutch syllable-final allophones approximant [r] and dark [l]. These ambiguous phones replaced either final /r/ or final /l/ in words in a lexical-decision task. This differential exposure affected perception of ambiguous stimuli on the same allophone continuum in a subsequent phonetic-categorization test: Listeners exposed to ambiguous phones in /r/-final words were more likely to perceive test stimuli as /r/ than listeners with exposure in /l/-final words. This effect was not found for test stimuli on continua using other allophones of /r/ and /l/. These results confirm that listeners use phonological abstraction in speech perception. They also show that context-sensitive allophones can play a role in this process, and hence that context-insensitive phonemes are not necessary. We suggest there may be no one unit of perception.     

The integration of temporally shifted visual feedback in a synchronization task: The role of perceptual stability in a visuo-proprioceptive conflict situation

The present study examined whether the beneficial role of coherently grouped visual motion structures for performing complex (interlimb) coordination patterns can be generalized to synchronization behavior in a visuo-proprioceptive conflict situation. To achieve this goal, 17 participants had to synchronize a self-moved circle, representing the arm movement, with a visual target signal corresponding to five temporally shifted visual feedback conditions (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the target cycle duration) in three synchronization modes (in-phase, anti-phase, and intermediate). The results showed that the perception of a newly generated perceptual Gestalt between the visual feedback of the arm and the target signal facilitated the synchronization performance in the preferred in-phase synchronization mode in contrast to the less stable anti-phase and intermediate mode. Our findings suggest that the complexity of the synchronization mode defines to what extent the visual and/or proprioceptive information source affects the synchronization performance in the present unimanual synchronization task.